Sunday, December 28, 2008

Sony’s Pocket PC: Netbook or Notebook?

Details of Sony’s rumored mini-notebook are steadily leaking. The last thing the world need is another netbook, but this one seems to have a twist: a small LED display (only 8 inches) with a large resolution of 1,600 by 768 pixels. Other specs appear to include a 1.33GHz Intel processor, a 60GB hard drive or 128GB SSD, and Windows Vista. Based on the clock speed, the chip might be an Intel Atom Z520 or the ultra low-voltage Core 2 Duo U7700, a more powerful and much pricier processor. The display size–along with some blurry pictures which were posted on Engadget and other sites–would put the “P series” somewhere between a netbook and what Intel refers to as an MID, or Mobile Internet Device, the target device for the Z series Atom processor. But it would be unusual to pair this chip with Vista and such a high-resolution display–most netbooks use Windows XP and the handful of MIDs that have shipped tend to use lightweight Linux operating systems. So it could be that the P series won’t be a netbook at all, but rather a traditional, high-end subnotebook with a distinctive display size and design.